The Latest SFWA Controversy

Buffysquirrel

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Eh, my problem with the book wasn't with the politics. I've read plenty of Niven before. My problem is that it's badly written.
 

thothguard51

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OK, if you guys think Jerry Pournelle is sexist, lets look at another author who has been called out by what he considers the feminist movement,...John Norman. (Please don't throw things at me.)

Dr. John Lang, AKA as John Norman, wrote the Gor Series. He started in the late 60's and the last Gor book, #32, was released in 2012. Anyone who has read his work can see that Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter series was a big influence for him. But, he claims that Homer, Freud, and Nietzsche had more influence on him. Nietzsche, it figures...

I think I read like the first 12, before I got tired of the same old storyline. Women were second class characters and once enslaved, they reveled in their new found sexual status. Michael Moorcock went as far as suggesting that bookstores should put the Gor series on the highest shelves, you know, the unreachable kind, not that he was advocating censorship...

I remember reading in the eighties that his publisher DAW was getting death threats because of the Gor series. I have no idea if thats true or not. Well it must not have been too bad because while I stopped at book 12, DAW published the Gor series up to the 25th book before they canned the Gor series. They said sales had dropped steadily but Dr. Lang felt he was being blacklisted because of the feminist movement.

So what is the point, Nick? Not sure I have one, but somebody, somewhere, still likes the Gor books as they are still selling, and Norman is still writing. No matter what anyone here thinks of John Norman the author, or Jerry Pournelle, or Larry Niven, there are others who enjoy their work. I think though that the trouble develops when reader can not separate the story from the authors public remarks, and perhaps that what is happening with the SFF.

Does any of that make sense?
 

zanzjan

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As you state below, this is about perception of an author as perceived as doing "assholery" in public.

Except this one was in private. Or it was until some person offered it up for everyone's consideration.

Yes, but the information IS now public.

Frankly, I'd rather I hadn't read it, and that it hadn't been available for all to see. Or been said in the first place.

Personally I've concluded that this reveals a win-at-all-costs approach to disputes.

The tumblr was, to the best of anyone's guess, the act of a single person. It certainly was not the SF community as a whole, nor any one side as a whole, and it's evident right in this thread that a lot of us are very uncomfortable with the privacy breech in principle. What the motivation was for doing it is also ambiguous, which makes it not entirely certain which "side" the poster was on. So I'd be deeply hesitant about drawing any sort of sweeping conclusions from a solitary act of unknown intent.

But if it's acceptable to root around trying to find private material to discredit someone publicly, I think that strikes at the root of community.

Again, I think you're reframing the discussion into something it's not. We don't know, first of all, that someone "rooted around" looking for material to discredit anyone; it may simply be that they were part of the larger audience for that material (that the posters knew were there) and were so appalled by it they thought it needed wider attention. Or they thought it was funny. Or maybe they though, haha, this will demoralize the crap out of all those wimminfolk, knowing how badly everyone is against them. We can speculate, but we DO NOT KNOW the motivation or opinion of who posted it unless that person chooses to speak up and enlighten us.

Second, I haven't seen anyone here stating outright that it's acceptable to violate an individual's privacy. How private this actually was has been (legitimately) questioned, and why someone might feel it necessary to do so has been discussed. And the content of what was disclosed is being discussed. It was not disclosed here, and as far as I know, not by anyone here.

Outrage appears to be an unavoidable byproduct of this entire situation, but we all need to be careful not to misrepresent the context of any piece of it. We really don't need any more personal agendas gumming up the works.
 

RedWombat

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I wish like hell they hadn't done it--if nothing else, now we'll get heels dug in that any attempts to close down a board people were already talking about closing means the terrorists have won.

Feh.
 

zanzjan

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OK, if you guys think Jerry Pournelle is sexist, lets look at another author who has been called out by what he considers the feminist movement,...John Norman.

[snip]

No matter what anyone here thinks of John Norman the author, or Jerry Pournelle, or Larry Niven, there are others who enjoy their work. I think though that the trouble develops when reader can not separate the story from the authors public remarks, and perhaps that what is happening with the SFF.

Does any of that make sense?

Yes, but it's a tangent we really don't need here right now.

Also, there's a big difference between stating, "I don't like Author X, so I'm not going to read any of his/her books", and stating, "I don't like Author X, so I don't think he/she should be allowed to publish them." And yes, there will always be people who take the latter extremist stance, on either side, but they don't represent the vast middle ground.

It may be that it's easier for Dr. Lang to credit his declining readership with a feminist conspiracy than to acknowledge that changing perceptions have made them less palatable to a larger percentage of his potential readership. Maybe those are the same thing. I dunno.

But yeah, I think that's a different discussion.
 

MacAllister

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Amadan, I really wish you'd put the Houseplants of Gor link back. Because...oh lordie.
 

dondomat

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I myself have no problem differentiating the work of art/craft produced by someone, and the someone. I can listen to Nazi folk ambient and commie hardcore and anarchist heavy metall and patriarchic power metal, and feminist electro-clash, for that matter, for the music, without foaming at the mouth about the politics of the musicians.

I read communists like Dashiel Hammett, anarcho-socialists like Iain Banks and Michael Moorcock, Stalinists like Maksim Gorky, anti-Stalinists like Bulgakov, conservatives like Orson Scott Card, Dean Koontz, and Mickey Spillane, liberals like Stephen King, Lee Child, and George R R Martin, and I do not have an overwhelming urge to write pamphlets to denounce their views of life, the universe, and the implications of being human.

I have my own views and personality and am therefore not threatened by people having other views, unless their views suddenly become totalitarian state law. Otherwise, gay pride and gay shame parades, matriarchic, patriarchic, transcendental goddess, and pagan bestiality clubs are all welcome to their thing. Checks and balances and not taking yourself as the measure of what is fundamentally, objectively right, now and forevermore, is the way to go, IMO.

Sure, even just because weed and speed and I have been known to tango, this automatically puts me into a minority, seen by large swaths of the population and the state apparatus of more or less any society in the world, as an immoral monster, a current or future criminal, who should be hunted down and forced to either undergo therapy, or to rot in jail.

Well, I think that about other groups of people. I laugh at crackpot fringe beliefs about health, the state, and the supernatural of others, but I hold my own crackpot fringe beliefs about health, the state, and the supernatural, dear to me.

The idea is to treat each other with a minimum of outward respect to keep civilization going, and to avoid bloodshed. Demanding that people actually change themselves on the inside, in order to really be like you, is unreasonable. My two cents.

And while I find Pournelle as a sort of sci-fi Tom Clancy--nothing to write home about--Niven is God, or at least was, at his peak. Ringworld and the Ringworld Engineers are up there smack in the middle between faster classics like Aldiss's Hothouse and Farmer's Riverworld, and slower classics like Dune. In many respects not Dune and not the Foundation, but Ringworld is the LOR of sci-fi, IMO.
 
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Amadan

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Amadan, I really wish you'd put the Houseplants of Gor link back. Because...oh lordie.

I've never been asked to undelete a post before! :eek:

Okay, here is what I posted before seeing zanzjan had asked to avoid a Gor derail. Thus, for entertainment purposes only:



I read the first few Gor books. (I was a teenager.) They were fairly readable planetary romances ala John Carter with a side of titillating slave girls.

Somewhere along the way they went completely off the rails into one-handed reading material with pages of ranting about how weak and effeminate Earthmen were for denying women their "true" natures. I have heard anecdotally that this was coincidentally right about the time the author's wife left him in a nasty, bitter divorce, but that might be an apocryphal story.

Anyway, John Lang aka Norman's remarks have suggested that to some degree, the views in his books are his views.

I wouldn't necessarily judge someone who likes the Gor novels (okay, I kind of would if they're over the age of seventeen) but the biggest fans of John Norman's writing seem to take it pretty damn seriously. I mean, there are actually fer-real Gorean lifestylists. Very few of whom, I suspect, while waxing Vox Dayish about their alpha-manly manitude and whacking off to pictures of slave girls, actually go hunt larls naked.

So if someone just likes their cheesy porn-pretending-to-be-sci-fi, okay, whatever dude. But if they're defending it as saying something meaningful about gender roles (John Lang is a Professor of Philosophy), or because it's cute that it pisses off feminists, well, I can see why the author and his fans become conflated with the author's books.

Obligatory Gor link: Houseplants of Gor. And that is seriously how John Norman writes.
 

Roxxsmom

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I think part of what makes a community is, if not tolerance for differences, a willingness to allow space for others. It's one thing to argue over public words in a public forum. We're doing it right here. But if it's acceptable to root around trying to find private material to discredit someone publicly, I think that strikes at the root of community.

I think this is at the heart of the problem, though. What if the "difference" you are being asked to tolerate is a lack of tolerance for difference?

Not that I don't also have qualms about taking screenies and posting conversations of a member's only forum.

But as a person who is both a fan of SF and F, and an aspiring writer who does not yet qualify for membership but has considered joining them as a long-term goal, well, I appreciate the heads-up about what I'm in for.

No, it really shouldn't surprise me that there are unpleasant, even awful human beings. Every organization has jerks. But I wouldn't have had any idea about how vicious some of the sexism and racism are, so if the time ever comes, I can, um "gird my loins," so to speak (but not in a chain mail bikini).

Anyway, John Lang aka Norman's remarks have suggested that to some degree, the views in his books are his views.

Yes they were. Believe it or not, John Lange has a doctorate, and is still a professor of Philosophy at City University of New York (he got his Ph.D back in 1963, so he's got to be pushing 80. It must be really "interesting" to serve on committees with him, or to be a fly on the wall when he has philosophical conversations with one of his colleagues in the department, feminist philosopher, Patricia J O' Conner. So even in academia, which has the reputation for being oh so PC, one can find some, um, well, I'm trying to find a way of putting it that is not completely disrespecting my fellow writer.
 
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MacAllister

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I've never been asked to undelete a post before! :eek:

Okay, here is what I posted before seeing zanzjan had asked to avoid a Gor derail. Thus, for entertainment purposes only:

<snip>
Obligatory Gor link: Houseplants of Gor. And that is seriously how John Norman writes.

Thank you for humoring me. :)

And I beg Zanzjan's tolerance for accidentally exacerbating the potential derail. I have no real excuse, other than that link always cracks me up.
 

zanzjan

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Amadan, I really wish you'd put the Houseplants of Gor link back. Because...oh lordie.

Ooooh! *wants to see*

The idea is to treat each other with a minimum of outward respect
...which was, I believe, the request that starting this whole sh*tstorm.

Demanding that people actually change themselves on the inside, in order to really be like you, is unreasonable. My two cents.
...and not that.

Okay, here is what I posted before seeing zanzjan had asked to avoid a Gor derail.

Well, a *funny* derail is a different thing entirely :)

I've actually read several Gor books. I was thirteen, on a weeks-long bus tour of England, had run out of reading material several days earlier, and had about two minutes to grab what I could in a little used bookstore inside a truck stop. I went solely by the covers, and ended up with several Gor books and the first Stephen Donaldson trilogy.

Yeah.

Later, while head librarian of my college SF club, someone stole and (it was reported) burned our entire collection of Gor books. Within days, someone had donated an entire new set. I never minded them in the library; if nothing else, they provide endless entertainment with "Gor tests", where you pick a random book out, flip it open to a random page, and see how far you can read before you've offended someone in the room. :)

Books is books. Some I like better than others, some less. And authors is people, which I feel much the same way about. I still try to treat people (and books) well, regardless of how I feel about 'em, and like to think it's reasonable to expect the same from others towards me.

I mean, there are actually fer-real Gorean lifestylists. Very few of whom, I suspect, while waxing Vox Dayish about their alpha-manly manitude and whacking off to pictures of slave girls, actually go hunt larls naked.
Incidentally, the one "Gorean lifestylist" I knew was a woman.

Obligatory Gor link: Houseplants of Gor. And that is seriously how John Norman writes.
Awesome.

I always suspected that Eye of Argon was actually a secret collaboration between John Norman and Gary Gygax.
 
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thothguard51

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I too had to laugh, because that is exactly how Dr. Lang writes...

And yet, at 18, I found his book worth reading. I was young, please forgive...
 

slhuang

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Later, while head librarian of my college SF club, someone stole and (it was reported) burned our entire collection of Gor books. Within days, someone had donated an entire new set. I never minded them in the library; if nothing else, they provide endless entertainment with "Gor tests", where you pick a random book out, flip it open to a random page, and see how far you can read before you've offended someone in the room. :)

I repped this to thothguard, but since we're allowing a funny derail . . . :)

The MIT Science Fiction Library has 90 percent of all English-language SFF in print. They had the Gor books, of course, but when I was there the shelf had a chain across it "to keep them from getting out accidentally." :D It was part of the introductory tour. Funnily enough I never had the urge to read them . . .
 

zanzjan

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And yet, at 18, I found his book worth reading. I was young, please forgive...

The earlier ones actually managed to have some plot to them, all problematic stuff aside. One could compare them, in that way, to the Anita Blake books, but I suspect if you did so the universe would suddenly vanish in a vacuum implosion.

The MIT Science Fiction Library has 90 percent of all English-language SFF in print. ... Funnily enough I never had the urge to read them . . .

All these years and I've still never managed to actually see MITSFS.

The thing about the Gor books is that they're kind of a phenomenon of SFF culture. I certainly wouldn't recommend them, but it's sort of like how getting salmonella broadens your understanding, in that one very small way, of the human experience.
 

Buffysquirrel

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I suppose at least we got to 27 pages before someone suggested that not reading a Pournelle book is punishment for his thoughtcrimes.
 

zanzjan

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I suppose at least we got to 27 pages before someone suggested that not reading a Pournelle book is punishment for his thoughtcrimes.

Or more precisely, before someone suggested that everyone else is saying we shouldn't read Pournelle books as punishment for his thoughtcrimes. Which no one here has. :Shrug:
 

Dave Hardy

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Yes, but the information IS now public.

Frankly, I'd rather I hadn't read it, and that it hadn't been available for all to see. Or been said in the first place.

I'm glad to see we agree on the important points. Never put anything in writing you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the newspaper is good advice all round.

The tumblr was, to the best of anyone's guess, the act of a single person. It certainly was not the SF community as a whole, nor any one side as a whole, and it's evident right in this thread that a lot of us are very uncomfortable with the privacy breech in principle. What the motivation was for doing it is also ambiguous, which makes it not entirely certain which "side" the poster was on. So I'd be deeply hesitant about drawing any sort of sweeping conclusions from a solitary act of unknown intent.



Again, I think you're reframing the discussion into something it's not. We don't know, first of all, that someone "rooted around" looking for material to discredit anyone; it may simply be that they were part of the larger audience for that material (that the posters knew were there) and were so appalled by it they thought it needed wider attention. Or they thought it was funny. Or maybe they though, haha, this will demoralize the crap out of all those wimminfolk, knowing how badly everyone is against them. We can speculate, but we DO NOT KNOW the motivation or opinion of who posted it unless that person chooses to speak up and enlighten us.

Second, I haven't seen anyone here stating outright that it's acceptable to violate an individual's privacy. How private this actually was has been (legitimately) questioned, and why someone might feel it necessary to do so has been discussed. And the content of what was disclosed is being discussed. It was not disclosed here, and as far as I know, not by anyone here.

Outrage appears to be an unavoidable byproduct of this entire situation, but we all need to be careful not to misrepresent the context of any piece of it. We really don't need any more personal agendas gumming up the works.

I suppose the whole tumblr bit could be a machiavellian plot to sow dissension, or for control of sff.net, or some other thing. What engaged my interest was the response from at least two people on this thread, that the act or divulging the posts was wrong ("shitty" even), but justified because the sff.net posters were powerful (compared to presidential candidates & slave-owners even) and the weak should know what they say in private. It seemed to me a pretty clear statement on the part of people right here on AW that the ends justify the means.

I do not agree with that and I'm happy to go on record saying so. That's what I did and I stand by my words.

What good do you see coming from this tumblr business (I think they're calling it Anonymous Fail now)?
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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I'm confused. I thought the tumblr posts were from the private SFWA boards? Isn't sff.net public? I can certainly read there. Or is there a private SFWA-members only area of sff.net?
 

dondomat

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And now, my serious three cents on the topic:

We can all agree, I think, that at least outwardly, there has been a trend of growing equality since the collapse of the Steampunk era with WWI. This bloodbath dissolved the mechanisms which kept everyone ‘in their place’, WWII helped even more, the constant threat of communist revolution during the Cold War cemented the use of ‘concessions’ by the elite in order to keep the various population groups from trying to take stuff away from said elite.

The second wave of feminism is my favorite wave – these were the brutally morally honest, in not always intellectually honest, thinkers, who were not afraid to go where their thoughts and feelings led them. A lot of people despise Andrea Dworkin. I love her stuff. I first loved her for the surname, which was of the card-making dwarf from Zelazny's Amber series, but then I got into her logic too. She’s the Trotsky of feminism, IMO.

To cut a long story short, all perceptions and interaction and values on this patriarchic globe were shown to be…patriarchic. Thus a deconstruction of perceptions and interactions and values took place. And it came to be, as was foretold by the oracles of old, or should have been foretold, at any rate; that the patriarchic system did indeed overlap to such an extent with the human system, that they were practically one. And when a person of intellect and integrity deconstructed far enough, what was reached beyond the patriarchic constructions was neither a ‘natural way’, nor an ‘infinity of alternatives’, but an abyss, of the type which stares back at you. The very fringe of the human condition as it existed.

So, let’s all backpedal, call ourselves the third wave of feminism, choose to believe that an infinity of roles exist for the taking (independently from any core matrixes, standing on nothing, a solipsist utopia concerning which doesn't do to probe in too deeply) and never risk approaching the world's edge again. Bravely ran away away, brave, brave sir Robin.

Before this happened, the female identity was deconstructed (by the generation actually brave enough, perhaps foolishly so, to "go there") and illustrated to be just another patriarchic construct within a universal core framework built upon an ‘active male/castrated male’ duality, but since outside that framework Cthulhu turned out to leer in the void, a mainly unsaid compromise took place. Women will be equals of men not by unearthing their original, natural identities (turned out to not really exist, outside goddess mysticism, and quasi-social Darwinism, just as with ‘natural male identities’, ‘natural family structures’, ‘natural gender and class roles’ etc.), but using and adapting the existing tools of the patriarchy.

So, it’s anal/oral oriented sadomasochistic sexuality you guys like to practice? Sure, we’re just us good. We’re better. We don’t even have Adam's apples to get in the way.

So, it’s broad shoulders, pants and fedoras that one needs to be admitted into the club? Shoulder pads, pants, and fedoras, here we go! After all, did not Nefertiti wear a fake beard in order to be a convincing top dog?

Primitive island society fable style – after a long and just struggle to not be defined by the males of the tribe but choose what and who they can be, the females of the tribe finally have the right to wear wooden phalluses on their necks and participate in hunting.

Today’s paranormal fantasy literature in my opinion is more or less a reflection of this empowerment, the way pulp thrillers after WWI were symptoms of the growing empowerment of the underling class men. Now phallic empowerment has reached another group. Many fictional heroines are go-getter badass dudes with a romantic side, and with all the appropriate phallic amulets of boots and swords and whatnot.

Or: a sexy vampire lover is an emotionally repressed man who cannot allow himself to lose control for fear of sudden violence, can do physically impossible stuff, and is part of a secret society which controls shit. When a woman is initiated into this society, she also receives the ability to be able to do all this mysterious stuff, but pays for this with her soul – becomes another emotionally repressed dude, in a way. Joins the club of power but for a price.

The werewolf is the class opposite of the aristocratic vamp – he is the ‘biker gang figure’ who gives in to passion utterly, animalistically. Bestial primal fucking vs finicky neurotic repressed sexuality. Take your pick, ladies (and gents), both are on the table. In fact, why not sample both?


The dark fantasies of the patriarchic male, historically satisfied by other males playing females, are finally available to both genders. Borders have blurred. Each and any one of us has the right to be a real man or a castrated man or both. Everyone can play with the role along the continuum of pretty princess/dirty whore/omni goddess, or wild authentic real man/cultured controlled real man.

Class roles along the spectrum of master-slave--yes, we cannot transcend this matrix core either, but at least it's becoming flexible. Let the role-playing games begin!

The possible roles (or, rather, lack of such) outside the patriarchic matrix are, in theory, available only to those willing to risk everything--sanity, livelihood, social status--i.e. almost no one. Like 10 000 ago, today too, if you want to really leave the loop, you have to go to the desert/forest and communicate with the birds and beasts and spirits and hope.

Anyway, which leads us to this controversy. Yes, all genders are presumed equal within the new and updated patriarchy model. Yes, everyone has the right to see everyone else as a sex object. Sex objectification has not been transcended, but has at least undergone equalization of approved access. Yes, men have naked women on book covers, and women have naked men on book covers. And QUILTBAG people have QUILTBAG people, furries have furries, role-playing fetishists have erotic elves, etc.

The piece by piece 'damning analysis' of the old-guard sci-fi article scan, which I read by following the link in the first post of the thread, was super lame. Well-intentioned, but incoherent and vulgar. It reacted to old-skool libertarian insinuations about PC Stalinism with stuff like ‘yeah, but a lot of women don’t really like naked men on book covers, and romance isn’t only about sex, you asshole’. Bravo, that really changed everything. Another victory for freedom.

Again, no-doubt a well-meaning weighting in, but, with my apologies, shallow and fragmented. It served no purpose save that of showing proudly to the world where one stands on the ‘divide’. OK. Super. Hope that helped.

It is of my personal opinion, that different voices outshouting each other about different topics, is a sign of a healthy society. As, cough, Mao said, ‘let a hundred flowers blossom.’ Yet it would have been so…nice..for people participating in the shouting matches, to actually make the effort to be non-vulgar, and at least partially reasonable.

And yes, I like the word ‘lady’. And ‘mister’. And 'madam'. And 'gentleman'. They are not my masters (unless we enter into an agreement). I choose what these words mean to me. Others will choose an opposite meaning. And Mao's hundred flowers will blossom yet again.
 
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Roxxsmom

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I suppose at least we got to 27 pages before someone suggested that not reading a Pournelle book is punishment for his thoughtcrimes.

Sorry. I meant to say that I didn't want to support him by reading his stuff (and I actually made that choice long before I'd even heard of the SFWA, let alone this whole thing) and that if the sexist stuff didn't sell, people would likely stop writing it. I didn't mean to imply I should make that decision for everyone :(
 

NicoleJLeBoeuf

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I read the first two Ringworld books and A World out of Time, and although Niven didn't have any terribly interesting female characters, they lacked the blatant hostility to feminism and environmentalism I detected in his collaborations with Pournelle.

I finally got around to reading Ringworld very recently--I have a sort of lifelong goal to acquaint myself with my genre's classics at least a little--and I read it with conscious "Product of its time ahoy!" filters on. Even so, my jaw dropped by a few feet when I got to the bit where the male protagonist told the female crew member that he was glad they'd ended up as lovers because otherwise he'd eventually have been "forced" to rape one of the other crew members.

Probably the most interesting thing to me about Ringworld was that, having read it, I was at last in a position to appreciate the ongoing conversation with it that Terry Pratchett's Strata is having.

I think this is at the heart of the problem, though. What if the "difference" you are being asked to tolerate is a lack of tolerance for difference?

This is an item that's raised its head a few times in the thread, previously from (I think it was) Buffysquirrel insisting that you couldn't be truly said to be tolerant unless you tolerated intolerance.

I'm glad to see a post questioning that assertion.

It's an assertion that bothers me a heck of a lot. First, however well-meaning some people who assert it (like Buffysquirrel!) are, it's also a favorite way for bigots to shoot down opposition from progressive activists with a conscience--they rely on our ethics being our Achilles' heel, which is to say, they rely on us being "too good to do any good." Secondly, because it posits bigotry as morally equivalent to not-bigotry, as both being equally meriting "tolerance." Thirdly, it posits that "tolerance" is the key thing, which it is not.

I do not fight for "tolerance" of women, people of color, people described by the various letters in the acronym QUILTBAG. I fight for acceptance of them in our society, for equal treatment under the law, for justice to be done them. Us. For us to have equal respect by virtue of being equally human. To adequately fight for these things, I can not "tolerate intolerance." You cannot make a space safe both for gay people and for homophobes, for people of color and for racists. And you can't argue for the status quo and still claim neutrality.

Legally, of course, I defend everyone's right to the protections of the first amendment, so far as they do go, and I appreciate that the ACLU has at times defended the KKK. But personally I have no tolerance for bigotry, sexual harassment, bullying and threatening of marginalized populations. And I'm not terribly swayed by accusations that this makes me "intolerant."

Yes. Yes it does. There are some things I feel honor-bound not to tolerate.

The wise Fred Clark ("Slactivist") often visits this topic and I can't disagree with him.

--

I've been staying out of this discussion partially because there was a lot to catch up on but mostly because I've been following similar discussions in SWFA's main forum, which, like the private SFWA channel in SFF.net (which, due to the tenor of discussion there as represented in part by that regrettable Tumblr, I have no desire to visit), is protected by privacy clauses in its TOS. Participants are expected not to quote others' material from there elsewhere except where they have received explicit permission, and even then they may not reference information revealed there. I would be afraid of accidentally, unintentionally, paraphrasing something I read there while under the mistaken impression I read it here.

I think violating such a privacy clause is a very bad thing, no matter what the reason. It is betraying the trust everyone who participates is such a forum has that the privacy clause will be respected--and I don't think kindly of attempts to portray those who trust in that promise of privacy as naive schmucks who didn't listen when their grandparents told them not to write in a letter anything they wouldn't want on the cover of the NYT, no indeed. It's a great adage to protect yourself, but it shouldn't become a sunshade to protect the people who violate the TOS.

In any case, the current Tumblr is causing a great deal of harm; even while it shines light on some members' deplorable regressive politics, it gives the false impression that the entirety of SFWA is like that, thus doing great injustice to people like Mary Robinette Kowal and Rachel Swirsky and Jim Hines and Steve Gould and [too many others to name] who are working to do good within that organization. Painting the whole of SFWA with the brush of bigotry in light of Bulletin content is not unreasonable, considering there was an editorial decision to put content in the public face of the organization; committing the same paint job in light of unrestrained comments on the part of rabid weasels in an unmoderated private NNTP is not nearly as reasonable.

And it also puts everyone else on both the private portion of SFF.net and the main SFWA forum (since membership overlaps) on notice: You could be next. For whatever reason the anonymous Tumblr curator thinks is sufficient.

Being an SFWA member myself who occasionally posts to the SFWA forum, I take that threat very seriously.
 
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Mr Flibble

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Personally, I read all kinds of writers without bothering to check up on whether their politics or social opinions match mine.

I tend not to check out an author re politics etc before I read (or after unless I'm all WTF???) But if I discover it on the offchance? And there's a good chance I'll want to spork my eyes out if I read.....?

Life's too short, and there's too many good books to be read without worrying about ones that will make my blood pressure go through the roof.

In general, I think it's easier to ignore, forgive, explain away various "problematic elements" in a story if you yourself are not the intended target of such. The best way to get these modern day jerks to stop writing sexist, socially irresponsible crap is to stop reading it.

Exactly. As Roxx says, I can forgive someone who's clearly a product of their time (though I might grind my teeth a bit, especially if it's a time not so very far removed from mine and/or they go too far) but the best way to stop people writing/selling this stuff is to stop buying it.
Certainly they've effectively driven members from the organization who didn't agree with them but didn't have the spoons to engage,

Don't have the spoons? I actually went and looked that up, because it sounds like 'doesn't have the cojones' but that didn't sound like you...
No matter what anyone here thinks of John Norman the author, or Jerry Pournelle, or Larry Niven, there are others who enjoy their work.

Yeah you make sense, and that part actually scares me a little.

It's an assertion that bothers me a heck of a lot. First, however well-meaning some people who assert it (like Buffysquirrel!) are, it's also a favorite way for bigots to shoot down opposition from progressive activists with a conscience--they rely on our ethics being our Achilles' heel, which is to say, they rely on us being "too good to do any good." Secondly, because it posits bigotry as morally equivalent to not-bigotry, as both being equally meriting "tolerance." Thirdly, it posits that "tolerance" is the key thing, which it is not.

I do not fight for "tolerance" of women, people of color, people described by the various letters in the acronym QUILTBAG. I fight for acceptance of them in our society, for equal treatment under the law, for justice to be done them. Us. For us to have equal respect by virtue of being equally human. To adequately fight for these things, I can not "tolerate intolerance." You cannot make a space safe both for gay people and for homophobes, for people of color and for racists. And you can't argue for the status quo and still claim neutrality.

That. Exactly.